Sounds like Oz is Watusi’s kind of place! Maybe he won’t go back to Wonder Valley…

***

By the way, the above episode is a revised strip; it was originally published as this photo of the completely unedited drawing:

So, you may be asking “where’s the color?” “What’s up with this ‘new look’ Watusi?” Well, funny story…

You’ve probably heard about the storms that blew through Memphis last weekend; in my case they also blew down a tree in my neighborhood! While it missed my studio, and all the houses involved, it sheared off the utility pole that services my studio! So, I had to put this week’s strip together as best as I could without power and without most of my usual tools. It gives you a little behind-the-scenes peek at how I put a strip together, as this state is a fairly typical inked page before I do clean up in the production stage.

I once read that cartooning is “the best an artist can do on a deadline”– or in this case, under adverse conditions– and that’s never felt more true to me than this week! Here’s hoping that things will be back to normal in time for the next episode!

A sighting of a real citizen of Oz! I guess Watusi & friends really are there!!

If you’re interested in some behind-the-scenes sneak peeks of things to come in Watusi’s journey to Oz, you’re invited to patronize me on Patreon. Supporters there have been treated to an early peek at my designs for the Emerald City, Oz character designs, and even a never-reprinted 4-page Watusi comic from 2014. Coming up for patrons there in June is the first Minerva Stone comic from 1999, which will be a useful primer for her role coming up in this storyline. Join in the fun, won’t you?

That was a close call! It sounds like Minerva should have provided everybody with a pre-flight safety demonstration!

Free Comic Book Day is coming on Saturday, and this year I’ll be drawing from noon-3 at 901 Comics in Midtown Memphis; hope you can join me there … or find some free comics in your own neighborhood. Any day is a great day to read comics, but Free Comic Book Day is an especially good one; I hope you’re able to take advantage of it!

I don’t often do splash pages like this; especially with a week between episodes, they don’t give a lot of story content for the space they use. But since W.W. Denslow created such lovely plates for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, I wanted to include some in my Oz story, too … and in such a way that places them in the context of the story.

On another technical note, I’m switching to present tense with my writing here. I was trying to match Baum’s use of past tense, but I just didn’t like how it meshed with spoken dialog in a comic panel. For the writers out there, compare this week’s strip to this one and this one— which sounds better to your ears?